Last Thursday I went to visit the nice people at Milton Keynes Perl Mongers. I think I’ve spoken at one of the technical meetings every year since they started holding them in 2006. I always enjoy speaking to MK.pm. They’re a small and friendly group. And they always make me feel really welcome.

This time I tried something a bit different. I had a few talks prepared that I’d given earlier this year, but on their mailing list I asked them to suggest what they wanted me to talk about. After a bit of discussion they came up with a few interesting suggestions and I agreed to present two of them. And, interestingly they came up with two talks that I would never have considered writing.

The talks seemed to go down pretty well and the slides are now available on Slideshare. They probably won’t work quite so well without me waffling on in front of them, but you might find them interesting.

• Maintaining CPAN Modules – the tools and techniques that I use to maintain my small selection of CPAN module
• Perl Training – Some experiences, anecdotes and vague conclusions drawn from the right years that I’ve been running Perl training courses

I found it an interesting experience writing talks that I hasn’t planned to write. It’s one that I hope to repeat in the future. Perhaps conferences should consider changing the way that Calls for Papers work. Maybe they should add a checkbox which means “I don’t care what I talk about – please give me a title.”